Pamela Anderson to FDA: End Tobacco Animal Testing

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Pamela Andersontweeted last night, calling for an end to animal testing for tobacco products.

Her tweet linked to PETA’s campaign against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products’ draft recommendation that some tobacco products be tested on animals. According to the animal rights organization, “This guidance would allow companies to conduct cruel animal tests to demonstrate the ‘reduced risks’ of new products and ingredients.”

PETA says that the tests are not beneficial to humans, as animals that are forced to breathe in the smoke do not develop the same diseases that humans do. The organization also claims the tobacco industry has misled the public with those results for decades, denying the link between smoking and cancer.

They go on to describe some of the testing. “In some of the horrendous tobacco tests that could be conducted, rats would be forced to breathe tobacco smoke for as long as six hours a day for months at a time by jamming the animals into tiny canisters and pumping concentrated cigarette smoke directly into their noses. The animals would then be killed and their bodies dissected,” PETA writes.

Belgium, Germany and the U.K. have all banned animal testing for tobacco products, and PETA also points out that Canada uses “modern, non-animal methods” to test the products’ safety. They are asking the public to urge the FDA to do the same: “We need to tell the FDA loudly and clearly that no more animals should suffer and die for these archaic, inaccurate, and cruel tests on products that we already know are deadly when used as directed! Please exercise your right as a U.S. citizen to submit a polite comment to the FDA urging it to remove any language recommending or allowing animal tests from its draft guidance on tobacco product testing.”

Comments to the FDA regarding the draft recommendation can be made here, before June 4, 2012.